Tuesday, January 1, 2008

flames v. rangers pregame: WI's dream matchup

my team: the calgary flamesmy east coast team: the new york rangers

the last time i saw the rangers play live was in october 2005, when i went to madison square gardens twice in one week. first was the subway series, followed by a visit by the habs four days later. one win, one loss. the new hero on broadway was henrik lundqvist (dubbed "king henrik" only days before in the press), who had only just started to run kevin weekes out of town and across the hudson....

although i do have a bit of a soft spot for blue-eyed swedes, lundqvist is only part of the reason for my affinity towards the blueshirts. documented in a venomous anti-leafs post last may, i outlined why a ridiculously stupid trade by JFJ made me pronounce that the rangers would be cup contenders four years down the road...

well, it's four years later and i'm not convinced they'll be hoisting the prize come springtime. in saying so, however, i do think they still have some amazing young talent, a great veteran core and an excellent coaching staff. make no mistake: like the flames, this team looks pretty sound on paper and is clearly underachieving.... gomez and drury aren't making the impact everyone expected, and my boy henrik isn't having a vezina-worthy year like he did last season. prucha's efficiency has faded like jagr's interest, and sean avery is looking every bit the golden boy, lately, having picked up a shift on the PP a few days ago and assisted on a massive goal... (check this out, btw... i don't know if i've ever seen such a bad team pic).

4 comments:

I think the Rangers are going to have a better 2nd half of the season. No way can they continue to not score like they are now. Jagr is clearly slowing, but there's simply too much talent on that team for them to be at the bottom of the league in offense.

Also, Lundqvist has been very, very good so far. Apparently he faces a lot of high percentage shots every night.